|
Tools and Strategies
The Early Literacy Project used commercially available resources but also created resources to support the classrooms in the project. These resources are presented within the framework of:
Commercially Available Resources
Equipment donated by
Bridges Canada, Inc.
- Switches, switch interfaces
- Single message devices, and simple speech generating devices
- Book worms, Talking Photo Albums
- Authoring software for electronic resource development
The Early Collection by Pati King Debaun
These resources are from the web site and need to be downloaded, printed, laminated and assembled.
Fisher-Price music and story CDs (accompanied by tips for supporting language and early literacy)
Communication Displays from Baltimore City Public School System
Communication displays created with Boardmaker software can be downloaded and printed using Boardmaker.
Resources developed
Using popular children's books, resources were developed to provide students with access to story reading, interaction during story reading, alphabet names and phonological awareness and early writing experiences.
Books used:
- Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr.
- The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle
- Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, by Bill Martin Jr.
- Goodnight Moon, by Margaret Brown
- Where's Spot? by Eric Hill
The adapted stories created for these books cannot be shared here for copyright reasons (we are sharing the activities created for the books). A sample of 6 pages of a story called "Fat Pig" is used to illustrate some ideas.
All resources were created using Boardmaker and Classroom Suite, incorporating graphics from these libraries.
Boardmaker is an application used widely for creating picture based communication displays.
IntelliTools Classroom Suite is an authoring program that:
- Uses principles of universal design, providing different methods of access (e.g. mouse, scanning with switches)
- Allows for easy changes to toolbars to accommodate a range of learning needs (i.e pictures vs. text, number of items from which to choose, size of choices, etc.)
Note: For students who cannot use the standard keyboard and mouse to access downloaded activities refer to Alternate Access to Early Literacy Resources.
Early Literacy Project Resources
Story Reading
Interaction During Story Reading
Alphabet Knowledge and Phonological Awareness
Early Writing
| 
